HI,
I am new to this forum having just purchased PD9. ver.9.0.0.2930 (latest update)
I am having problems capturing Mini DV video from my Sony DCR TRV900, which is supported by PD. The Pc platform has been successfully used to capture DV using Pinnacle Sytems DV200 from yesteryear.

Problem 1:

In the capture screen the video plays beautifully through the Firewire connection, and the cam can be controlled.
The quality profile is selected as DV AVI Standard Format. (UK PAL 25fps, PCM Audio)

When I click record the capture begins perfectly for about 3 secs, then the sound changes with a slight high frequency chopping. You have to listen closely to hear it. There is also some, what sounds like, digital audio clipping crackles. Reducing Vol control has no effect.

When I stop capture and PD attempts to import the file I get a message about the format being incorrect.

The recorded clip will not play at all in media player or win movie maker.
The clip plays in VLC media player, but you can detect the sound problems at a lower level. (Slightly better than when recording taking place, live). Some clips have perfect sound. However if you try and fast forward or rewind the clip, VLC looses control, plays at wrong speed or freezes. There are no dropped frames though.

If I set the profile to MPEG 1 or 2 all is captured perfectly, but I want to be able to capture in DVAVI and write my project back to DV tape without encoding back and forth.

Presumably, it is power director that is compiling the clip format, or is it the camera's native format merely fed straight through? Does the firewire card play any role in the construction of the output file?

The firewire card is:

Dynamode PCI-3PFW, which reports as VIA OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller in device manager. Packaged documentation states complies with OHCI spec V1.0 and

V1.1, Microsoft OHCI,DV and SBP-2 driver in all windows systems. Integrated 400 Mbit PHY.

OS is Windows XP Pro. Sound Card: Realtech AC'97 Audio.

Problem 2:

Auto batch capture initially works well providing the scene thumnails. When I stop the process, PD refreshes the thumbnails and they all dissappear!! All the timecodes seem to be intact and you can set it to capture, but the thumnails never return. When I click finish, no clips are even attempted to be imported into the captured content screen. If they had, the problems above then prevent import into the media folder anyway, but none the less, strange.

When quality profile is set to MPEG the same happens but the thumbnails return when the clips import.

Hopefully, I've included enough information for you to be able to suggest what might be happening here.

Any help would be appreciated.
Regards,
James.